What actually is a DDoS attack

Everything you need to know about a DDoS attack

Dedicated Denial of Services (DDoS) attack is a sophisticated hack on a website.The internet at times seems frightfully fragile and comes in the grasps of a DDoS attack. DDoS attacks have always existed over the years but in the recent times these attacks have become much more complex and increased in numbers with easy to launch techniques.

The consequences of a successful DDoS attack for any established organization is devastating and witnesses millions of dollars loss in revenue and eventually erase the existence of a once great brand. Giants like Twitter and Spotify have also experienced DDoS attacks resulting in shutting down of the website for quite a long time. DDoS attacks are predicted to get worse with time and the new era has wiped out the concept of DDoS attacks being weak threats.

DDoS attack threats are continuously growing in numbers and the statistics suggest around 50 million attacks taking place in a year summing down to one – two attacks every second. The complexity of the attacks is also increasing resulting in the vulnerability of many different parts of a company’s network. The scope and objectives of DDoS attacks are more dangerous and are often used as a diversion for illegal activities like theft and fraud. Associated costs with DDoS attacks are soaring high and are expected to move higher in the bar.

If explained in simple words procedure of a DDoS attack at the basic level is very easy to decipher. The intended recipient gets a huge amount of packets from the attacker. These packets are mostly garbage. The garbage packets keep on increasing in numbers and the server eventually fails to handle the incoming connections. Gradually the server slows down due to excessive traffic and at times totally shuts down.

In a recent case ”Dyn” (a major DNS provider ) succumbed to a DDoS attack resulting in shutting down of Twitter for a long period of time. The DDoS attack associated with Dyn was a little more complex. Owing to the popularity of the company, it is believed that Dyn certainly had very advanced systems for DDoS mitigation still they failed. It is certain that the attackers used much more than just a PC to attack such a major organization.

Back in 2011, an infamous DDoS attack took place that can easily put the security of sites to shame. The attackers did not limit themselves to taking out an individual website for a period of time but opted to take down a major piece of the internet backbone for an entire morning, not once but twice. If it’s easy for attackers to launch DDoS attacks through DDoS botnets then a huge chunk of the internet is at risk now.

There are organizations coming up every day that promises DDoS protection and the best way to protect the critical infrastructure of the network is to foresee the threats or at least be well equipped to deal with them. If the DDoS attacks can hamper giants like Dyn then this new breed of DDoS attacks is a very scary problem.